It's easy to get caught up in the headlines that paint the education world as a black and white battle field; 'for this,' 'against that,' a slew of divisive buzz words detracting from the work we can do best together. We're here to put an end to that paradigm.

It is perhaps not surprising, in an election season when so many of those who attempted to impose these changes stand to lose their jobs that Duncan and others would feign a change of heart. If you listen carefully, it is not really a change at all.

If you had six months, little to no resources, and a clear mandate to solve a chronic country-wide problem -- what would you do? As someone who cares deeply about American public education, I believe a certain approach could yield great returns.

The nature of homework -- at what age it should start and what it should ask of children -- will continue to evolve. For now, perhaps we should want something better for our children than subjecting them to the same pressures that make our lives so hectic and stressful.

Having studied in both Korea and the U.S., we do not find much to admire about the Korean education system. For all its faults, the "liberal" American system cultivates initiative and ingenuity like no other, a fact which might explain why the U.S. still leads the world in technological and cultural innovation.

Access to decent education, starting with preschool, remains a significant challenge even here in wealthy America, and of course far more so in less developed countries. Many of the world's kids will apparently tell you so.

Not fully understanding the link between education and its effect on their future success, our youth are often distracted with social media along with athletics -- tweeting constantly, both in class and out.

When we served together in the Senate, we found ourselves on different sides of a variety of issues. But when it came to common-sense measures that benefitted our country and our citizens, we pulled together.

Teachers often suffer from low-esteem, low regard and are derided by "the system." How can we expect change in the classroom if the person responsible for molding the minds of tomorrow's leaders has no standing in their local community?

As a country we have looked to education as a road to equal opportunity - as a path to gaining knowledge, developing skills and learning behaviors that prepare children to do well as students, workers and citizens throughout their life.

Some bad news makes you question whether we, as a nation, have the smarts, the wherewithal, the old-fashioned grit to solve our problems. For example: while the rest of the world's kids seem to be getting smarter, our kids don't. But why?

We leave together. You leave Yale College after four years; I leave the Yale Presidency after twenty. I find myself thinking about a Grateful Dead song written in 1970, the year I came to Yale as a graduate student. You know the words: "Lately it occurs to me, what a long, strange trip it's been." It's been a long trip, but, for us, more wonderful than strange.

Students from disenfranchised social groups in the United States continue to receive substandard K-12 education and have significantly less access to higher education and other valued social opportunities and resources.

Education is overwhelmed with an allegiance to mandated curriculums and standardized testing. Students are tired and weary. Teachers must not think and create on their own -- they must follow the mandated path.

How do American students fare on the latest round of respected international assessments? Not so well, according to recent results on the exam known as the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA.

Every Native American language is in extreme danger. Some of them are looking at language death in the next decade, and some are trying to just stabilize the number of children who are learning and speaking their ancestral languages.

The good news is that teachers and parents are open to the idea of the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. The bad news is that parents and teachers don't have a lot of information about what the Common Core really is